Deep within west Moabit’s leafy residential streets hides a true architectural gem, the AEG Turbinenhalle (the turbine factory of the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft, ‘General Electricity Company’), now part of Siemens AG.
While the turbine factory may be unknown to most Berliners, the hulking glass-and-steel temple is considered the beginning of modern industrial architecture in Germany, oft-cited as one of the 20th century’s great buildings and a place of pilgrimage for engineering enthusiasts who clinically survey its three-pin arch, stately skyscraper windows and concrete pedestals.
Designed and built from 1908 to 1910 by former Darmstadt leader Peter Behrens and prominent civil engineer Karl Bernhard, the structure symbolically transformed the growing dominance of machine over man into something beautiful, lending a sense of nobility to the toil of generations of factory workers.